Thursday, 19 June 2014

DIGITAL WORDS / Lana Del Rey 'Ultraviolence' Album Review

The title of Lana Del
Rey’s debut album – 2012’s Born To Die – was apt. Dear Lana was the
sacrificial lamb of online “tastemakers” and music press alike. Whilst Vogue
were happy to plaster her face on their cover and H&M willing to make her
their spokesmodel, music communities were tearing her apart as fervently as they
once extolled the virtues of mega underground hit ‘Video Games’.

Against the odds Lana
Del Rey overcame the instant backlash that greeted her rebellious prom queen
persona (please, let’s put that “gangster Nancy Sinatra” quote to bed – she
probably regrets saying it as much as I hate repeating it). Not only did she
survive the widespread obsession with her authenticity, she’s come out of it
with an unanticipated aura of intrigue. For a star willing to contribute to
Hollywood soundtracks and sing at the most celeb of celebrity wedding events,
she has kept her autonomy and privacy admirably intact.

Could any of Lana’s
contemporaries have met their chosen album producer (Black Keys’ Dan Auberbach)
in a strip club and kept it to themselves? No, of course not – TMZ would have
been alerted and Instagram furnished with a “check out how edgy I am” snapshot.
Whilst Lana Del Rey holds as much sway as pop’s most A-list of lady artistes,
she is in fact in a wholly different league. She adds so much more to pop culture’s
conversation than, say, a Rihanna, Lorde, Beyonce or even a Lady Gaga. Her
subversion is, well, more subversive. She quietly yet proudly poeticises
darkness, seediness and self-destruction. She tells interviewers she wishes she
was “dead already” and has opted out of music’s current obsession with forcing
women into the feminist debate ring. “For me,
the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept...” she told Fader. At
last! Someone had the guts to say it! Her aversion to fame seems to arise
from her singular consciousness of how ridiculous it is. It’s this mix of
reluctance and self-awareness that makes Lana Del Rey queen.

As a whole, Ultraviolence
does indeed live up to the Lana’s cultivated level of intrigue even if its
individual songs do not. Much of what she established about herself as an
artist on Born To Die carries over onto Ultraviolence – she’s
still captivated by beauty queens with death wishes and daddy issues, and she
still manages to sound dead of eye and pouted of lip – yet opener ‘Cruel World’
establishes it is a very different record. The hip hop beats and capsule hooks
have been replaced by heavy washes of guitar and wandering vocal lines. The
overall pace is more measured, the attitude more resigned and personality more
distinct. The gloss remains but there’s a definite level of refinement

As Lana works her way
through her litany of doomed damsels and bad boy love interests, she luxuriates
in this comfort zone without becoming complacent. She persists with her tropes
and articulates her visions fearlessly. What Lana Del Rey does, she does so
very, very well – the sweetest of vocals, the sourest of lyrics, making
nightmares sound like fantasies and tragedies like romances.